Data: Making Money from Air Travel

Travel is one of the most technology-enabled industries, with a rapidly increasing amount of information exposed through travel-related sites. What can be done with this data? Rick Seaney will show us.

Rick Seaney

FareCompare.com

Rick is known as one of the foremost airfare experts in the industry. Reuters News, The Associated Press, & Bloomberg regularly publish Farecompare.com (his website) airfare pricing data along with Rick’s expert analysis.

His popular new generation air travel website, (FareCompare.com, a free service to consumers), combines powerful new technology, with expert advice and insider tips to empower consumers with information to make the best airfare buying decision. FareCompare proprietary software rapidly processes massive amounts of complex airfare data, directly from the airlines, and delivers the new airfare pricing to consumers, hours before it shows up anywhere else (including the most well known sites and even the airline websites).

Farecompare.com not only helps travelers find airfare deals, but also provides important news to consumers about air travel issues. On October 4th, 2007, CBS Evening News broadcast an interview with Rick, along with Farecompare data, alerting the national television audience about which cities to avoid flying through on Thanksgiving, due to likely delays and cancellations. The New York Times published an article headlined “Flying for the Holidays? Brace Yourself” featuring Rick’s interview & data about Thanksgiving air travel, which became one of the NY Times ‘most emailed’ of the week.

Rick’s latest passion (besides making sure consumers never overpay for airfare again) is helping airline passengers learn about their rights, and working to improve customer service issues. Follow what Rick is doing daily on his new blog at www.RickSeaney.com and email him at rick.seaney@farecompare.com.

Rick received his degree from Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas where he studied Mathematics and Computer Science. He was hired by Mobil Oil, while still going to college, to run their computer system and became a consultant to the company upon graduation.

During the 1980’s, Rick was deeply involved with high-end computing technology that processed and mined huge quantities of oil and gas exploration data.

In the late 1990’s, he decided to get into Internet technologies and move away from the oil and gas industry, and in 1999, Rick founded XXI Technologies (21st Century Technologies).

During 2001, XXI Technologies began building a system for dynamic travel packaging. By 2004, FareCompare L.P. was established for building proprietary software to process airfare information, and in 2006, FareCompare.com, the present consumer airfare website debuted on the Internet.

Travel + Leisure just named Farecompare.com in it’s top 25 travel websites, Daily Candy, in one if it’s email tips praised the website in dazzling report about Farecompare.com finding cheap First Class Airline Tickets.